Many lives and property have been lost in the past few days in Lagos State, Edo, Ondo, Oyo, Delta, Rivers and other parts of Nigeria, therefore, it will be highly irresponsible for anyone who meant well for the country to keep peddling News that could further incite or cause more division among people of the country at large.
The fact that Nigeria has so many different tribes, religion and belief are the more reason why people need to beware of the information they share to avoid religious or tribal clashes among the heterogeneous tribes and religions.
The EndSARS protests started with a clear cut intention to demand a reformed police Force in Nigeria before it was reportedly hijacked by some hoodlums who later hide under the protests to wreak havoc on many innocent Nigerians, hence discrediting the intention of the protests to a large extent.
In Lagos, many property and investments were lost to attacks by hoodlums including the News media allegedly owned by the National leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, whose Television station, TVC and Newspaper organisation, The Nation Newspaper were razed by hoodlums.
It was gathered that the arsonists got infuriated by the rumours that Bola Tinubu ordered the shooting and killing that occurred at Lekki Tollgate, Lagos State on Tuesday, October 20, 2020, though it was an unsubstantiated rumour, many things have been destroyed all because of a rumour, assumption or fake News including many police stations and the family house of the Lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
Following the shooting and killing that took place at Lekki Tollgate, the social media was jampacked with so many images, videos and reports claiming that some people died, though, people were confirmed dead during the shooting, some people who were reported dead later denied the news and described it as misleading and untrue.
The Nigerian Military also had its share of battling what it tagged fake news too as it uses its social media platforms to counter many reports before, during and after the EndSARS protests in the country. One of the reports tagged fake by the Military was the post by one Kelvin Odanz who claimed that EndSARS was declared a terrorist organisation in a confidential army memo.
Also, the report linking the Nigerian Army to the killing of some EndSARS protesters at Lekki was tagged fake news by the military.
Fake News is a tool for misinformation on a particular subject matter and there are instances of how it has caused division and fights in some countries around the world all because someone somewhere was impatient enough to verify the information at their disposal before disseminating it.
It was gathered that over 100 incorrect articles were published concerning the 2016 United States presidential election majorly from satirical news websites or individual websites with an incentive to propagate false information, either as clickbait or to serve a purpose.
Also, fake news ranges from satire, false connection a situation whereby headlines, visuals or captions don’t support the content, misleading content, false context, impostor content, manipulated content and fabricated content which is designed to deceive and do harm.
Fake news tends to become viral among the public with the presence of social media platforms like Twitter, it becomes easier for false information to diffuse quickly. According to research, false political information tends to spread 3 times faster than other false news, for instance, on Twitter, false tweets have a much higher chance of being retweeted than truthful tweets.
No doubt, Nigeria is going through a phase that requires the dissemination of information to people, however, the rush to share information should not be an excuse to engage in peddling fake news given how fast information travels in this era of social media. Many people have been misled because of fake news and rumour about the happenings around them.
Given the number of people that have access to the social media, it is easy for people to fabricate news and contents from the corner of their room to mislead or cause panic, while some others engage in such for the sake of gaining relevance on social media. However, for whatever reason people engage in such a thing, it is obvious that the harm in peddling fake news can destroy so many things within a twinkle of an eye.
There are so many harms in spreading fake news and one of such harms is causing fears among people. For instance, the issue of fake news has preoccupied policymakers across Europe. Fake news has since been applied to everything from outright fabrications to simple mistakes in news reporting, and even true news one wants to discredit.
Any report that is not genuine can cause fear and hatred among people and there have been so many instances of such in the past few days. It is, however, very imperative for people to verify their sources of information before disseminating such to avoid causing unnecessary havoc and raising a false alarm.
Fake news can be very harmful, therefore, people need to be careful with the information they share or digest on the social media platforms. Before you click on the forward button on Whatsapp or Facebook, you can take your time to verify the information to avoid causing breeding hatred or inciteful claims.
To recognise fake news, you need to consider the source to understand its mission and purpose, read beyond the headline to understand the whole story and also check the authors to see if they are real and credible, many news sources cannot be trusted.
You also need to double-check the date of publication to see if the story is relevant and up to date, do well to ask if it is a joke, review your own biases and ask experts to get confirmation from independent people with knowledge about such subject matter.
